


Some Colour On These Barren Walls

by Vodnici



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Gen, No Angst, Wholesome, don’t be too harsh, idk how to tag this, it’s my first upload! i don’t write and post fanfic! until now i guess lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 15:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15952682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodnici/pseuds/Vodnici
Summary: AJ realises he’s never seen Clementine make art and decides to ask her to.





	Some Colour On These Barren Walls

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh hi, this is my first ever fanfic and I’m slightly terrified. It’s a whole new world. I decided to start with something simple and domestic since I also haven’t written for myself in a few months. I’ve only proofread it once (1) so I hope it’s not horrible. Enjoy!

“Clem, are you good at drawing?”  
  
Clementine had been lost in thought - if she were frank, she had probably been half asleep - but AJ’s question jolted her out of her own head. She sat up in her bed and looked around, the room bathed in a soft gold colour from the setting sun shining in through the wooden boards and metal bars on the window, small specks of dust becoming visible as they passed through the rays of sunlight. AJ was bent over the table on the opposite wall, scribbling away intently on a piece of paper with the pencils he and Tenn had begun to share.  
  
“Aasim said he makes drawings in his diary sometimes,” AJ continued. “He called them... ill... illu...”  
  
“Illustrations?” Clementine offered as she got to her feet.  
  
“Yeah! Illustrations. But he says he’s not very good at it- at drawing, I mean. Are you good at it? I’ve never seen you draw.”  
  
Clementine paused for a moment, standing next to AJ at the table, and realisation hit her that she hadn’t made a drawing since she was very young. Since a few months after it all started, when she and Duck had drawn together with pencils and chalk at the motor inn. Since Lee.  
  
“I don’t actually know, AJ,” Clementine said. “I haven’t drawn in a very long time.”  
  
AJ looked up at her with his big, brown, hopeful eyes. “Don’t you wanna try? I have more paper, and there’s a lot of different colours. Me and Tenn split them between us.”  
  
Clementine hesitated for no reason she could discern. “Sure. All right.”  
  
She dragged out a stool from the closet and took a seat next to AJ, who placed a blank piece of paper in front of her. The pencils lay in a pile between them, some only small stumps from probably years of use, others still rather long.  
  
Clementine just stared at the blank white for a moment, and started fiddling with the edge of the paper. AJ was looking at her expectantly.  
  
“I think you need to pick up a pencil and put the tip on the-“  
  
“I know how to draw, smart guy. I just need to think of _what_ to draw.”  
  
AJ shrugged and returned his attention to his own drawing. “You can draw whatever you want, I guess. I like to draw my friends, Aasim draws things that have happened, and Tenn draws things he imagines.”  
  
Clementine remembered drawing all of those things, once. She drew her parents, her friends from school, things she did, fantasy creatures. She had liked drawing, and she had drawn every chance she got, but now she hadn’t even held a pencil in years. She wondered if she still had any imagination left to make a picture.  
  
Her eyes fell on one of AJ’s older drawings that still hung on their wall, their very first decorational addition to their new home. “Me protekting Clem”, the choppy letters said. AJ’s spelling and handwriting had gotten better since then, but still it gave Clementine inspiration.

Holding a pencil felt awkward at first, but muscle memory helped her and soon the lines were flowing across the paper. Black, browns, greens, blues. There was no yellow, so she used orange, and there was no red, so she used purple. AJ had stopped working on his own art and was watching Clementine make hers with wide, intrigued eyes.  
  
When she put down the final pencil and straightened her back, an explosion of colour had taken form in front of her. The picture showed two people, one slightly taller than the other and carrying two dead rabbits by the ears, and two big buildings, one with a group of small stick figure people surrounding it and one filled with green behind glass walls. Underneath the drawing, Clementine’s handwriting spelled: ‘Me protecting AJ’.  
  
“That’s us,” AJ pointed at the drawing.  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“And... you have rabbits? For food?”  
  
Clementine nodded.  
  
“What are these buildings?”  
  
“This one,” Clementine pointed, “that’s the school. And this other one, that’s the greenhouse we helped fix.”  
  
“But...” AJ looked perplexed, “you’re not protecting me. There aren’t any monsters or guns in the picture.”  
  
“Well, protection isn’t always killing monsters. It’s that, too, but it’s also finding a safe home, and making sure you have food. Actually, I should’ve drawn you holding a spear with a fish on it, since you’re so great at fishing. I’ll do that in my next drawing.”  
  
AJ smiled and nodded. “I can protect you by catching fish, then. I don’t really like the greenhouse. It’s always so hot and wet in there.”  
  
Clementine smiled back, amused. “That’s how it’s supposed to be in there. The vegetables need it to grow. And you need _them_ to grow.” Clementine poked him in the stomach on “them”, making him giggle.  
  
“A lot of those vegetables are gross, though,” AJ said, grimacing slightly.  
  
“Then... draw me the ones that aren’t gross, and I’ll make a cool drawing of you with that spear.”  
  
“Deal!”

Eventually the sun set beyond the buildings of the school and the golden light faded from Clementine and AJ’s room, but they simply lit two candles and kept drawing. They drew until their stomachs grumbled and they had become so hungry they couldn’t focus on anything but Omar’s dinner cooking outside. When they left to join the others, their walls were filled with drawings with all sorts of motives and colours: All the kids at Ericson’s, walkers being overcome in various creative ways, trees, the river (as AJ remembers it), the view out of the window, and real animals such as rabbits, deer and fish, but also fantastical ones in the likes of dragons, unicorns and fairies, which Clementine told him about as she recalled reading about them. By the time almost every inch of reachable wall was covered in all manner of creature and person, Clementine imagined silently that the room had regained at least _some_ of the colour put there by Sophie once.


End file.
